This won’t solve speed issues… they are talking out their asses.
I agree with others, sometimes you have to play whack a mole with IT so they can rule stuff out. They usually have a checklist they’re following by doing the least effort things first.
We used to recommend static IPs to people who did a lot of business to go… Not sure why but it was required for our program to function more consistently. (Honestly it was a hunk of garbage because they blamed Verizon instead of fixing the actual issue). Unless your IP is rapidly changing the IP I don’t see why it would affect your IT. In my experience slowness to VPN is related to the VPN itself, usually bad files or corruption, having IT reinstall it fixes the issue usually.
Why is this even an issue, why doesn’t she have one of the IT remote into the work computer at home, and fix the issue?
No.
Moving on, is she trying to connect via WiFi or an ethernet cable? If WiFi, it could be an issue with the WiFi card, drivers, or something (like a microwave) causing interference. If ethernet, the IT team should be able to rule out an issue pretty easily using a cable tester, and then could try reinstalling the ethernet driver or checking the switch she is plugged into.
It’s nonsense and not only that you need a business internet to get static IP
- It’s bullshit.
- Tell her to be careful and on your guard, they might try to upsell her if she pays for their services. My internet provider took a small fee to give me a static ip which I needed for security reasons.
Indeed this. A static IP address would still share the bandwidth with the rest of the devices in the home unless it was on a completely different modem or connection. Some routers allow you to choose what devices get priority traffic so a combination of a DHCP reservation and QoS priority settings would be the direction I would go.
I’d push back a little if the company isn’t going to pony up the extra $20 per month for the upgrade! I doubt this is assigning her PC an IP, they want them to buy a static IP on the internet connection.
This is probably what’s happening. I think it’s shitty to give a fake solution to get you to stop bothering them though. They should just check the settings they can on the laptop and tell you if it’s something with your ISP and instruct you to do it yourself, the fake answer helps nobody.
I think it may be the VPN used for work is badly configured cheaply
Her laptop isn’t what’s getting the static IP assignment. They’re asking her to get a static IP on the internet circuit.
It won’t make a difference, but she won’t have to make any changes to her laptop.
They’re probably not smoking anything. They just don’t have an answer yet, and “setting up a static IP” will keep her busy for a while.
ah, I read it as wanting to be static within the lan. maybe rule out that it was getting leases too often or something, I dunno, even that’s being generous I think. I didn’t consider that they might have asked for the wan address to be static.
That I’d definitely write off as nuts, I’d hazard a guess that close to zero users on their vpn would fulfil that requirement.
I think it’s going to cost a lot more than $20 extra for a Static IP.
No one is saying they didn’t. Keep in mind that this is an account that we are getting second hand. We don’t know what was actually said or what troubleshooting was actually done. I know from personal experience is that when you are dealing with connection issues of a remote employee’s assets from home, what you can do and what you can reasonably troubleshoot is pretty limited.
This. Do her internet speeds tank once she connects to to the VPN? Does she have web filtering / proxy software installed (Zscaler)?
Well in that case, a static external IP would allow them to white list the IP that she is reaching the VPN from, I can’t see this having any major difference unless they specifically rate limit unknown IPs, but if this is the case they should be able to tell you as much.
They probably don’t want to be bothered trying to diagnose a home network and aren’t going to jump through hoops to modify their settings for the one user. Downsides WFH support. Too many variables.
Depends on the country. In Australia it’s $10 a month for my ISP
In Canada $42/month currently on discount for $25